People fight dogs. It happens. They take them as puppies and train them to fight to the death. It is horrible, but it happens. However, when a dog fighting ring is discovered, we do not say, “It is horrible how some people mistreat dogs. We can prevent these abuses if we just get rid of all the dogs in America.” No. We understand that dogs are a good thing. We understand that the people that abused them are the the bad ones. We punish the humans for their offenses. Even the most vicious dog in these circumstances is innocent of any crime other than being abused by a human with evil in his heart. And yes, there have been cases, while decidedly rare in modern times, of murder by dog.

Statistically speaking, there are about 33,000 gun deaths in America per year. Over half are suicides. Once you whittle it down, it comes down to about 5,000 homicides a year. Statistically speaking, this is nothing if you want to compare it to drug overdoses, death by medical malpractice, or a host of other causes where a fraction of effort could reduce deaths by 10% and easily outpace cutting gun deaths to zero. You can say, “Every gun death is a tragedy,” and I will disagree. When a rapist is killed by an innocent woman who is being attacked, that is NOT a tragedy.

Going back to the dog analogy, I compared these school shooters to a dog that’s been kicked. I liked that analogy. Let’s go back to the dog fighting example. Some of these dogs, when they are discovered, are too vicious and have to be put down. That is what these kids are. Maybe the bullying had pushed them to these dark deeds, much the same way the abuse pushes these dogs to be killers, but that does not excuse their nature. Their nature, at that point, is real and must be dealt with. However, when they put these dogs down, there is nothing but sadness at what must be done.

That is how we need to execute people when it is necessary. There should be no joy. No self-righteous anger. There should be a calm sadness. It should be more like “And so it’s come to this…” A sense of pity that we have failed these individuals. We failed to identify that they needed help. We failed to steer them back to the righteous path. In so doing, we may learn to identify those who need help, to prevent such failures in the future. This would be my fondest hope.